flying lotus: c/d, s/d

i've been going back to 'los angeles' a lot lately and it feels a lot more detailed & visceral than this imo

I'd say LA is def. more visceral, Cosmogramma more detailed...

cosmogramma has all the orchestration, but i hear a lot more detail in the synths, weird background sounds, and rhythms in l.a.

btw i never caught that essential mix, would love to hear it if someone could hook me up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dVGlCH2ag&NR=1

i posting this strictly for its awesome artwork:

http://imgur.com/N93xu.jpg

Pattern+Grid World is an upcoming EP by Flying Lotus. It was announced on the Warp Records website on August 17, 2010, and is to be released on September 20/21, 2010.

Track Listing:

1. Clay
2. Kill Your Co-Workers
3. PieFace
4. Time Vampires
5. Jurassic Notion/M Theory
6. Camera Day
7. Physics For Everyone!

So how is this other Flying Lotus thing?

The material is different enough from Cosmogramma to warrant its own EP. Not sure if these are leftovers or mostly new stuff he's just whipped up, but I like it.

scared to relisten because it keeps sounding more and more like squarepusher

but really, THE LORN ALBUM IS SICK

ok this is the best thing ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLNK3mn7zE

don't like the new EP much myself, too chiptunes / drill & bass for my taste

what do you know, i agree! too squarepusher, i think i only listened to it once.

if i'm going to listen to chiptunes i'd rather listen to rustie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOHAXsJHPuw

ok this is the best thing ever - fyi song is ok, I was mostly referring to the video.

from his tweets, i'm going to guess this guy wasn't nominated for a grammy this year

flyinglotus Flying Lotus
Wonder if i have any chance in hell getting a grammy nomination this week. If I ever had a shot, this is the year./29 Nov

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
BT, Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada??? are you serious??Grammys are a joke. FUCK YOU./2 Dec

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
@thegrammys FUCK YOU/2 Dec

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
@thegrammys You are jokes/2 Dec

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
@thegrammys PussyAssNotknowingShitaboutREALmusicBitchMadeMotherfuckers/2 Dec

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
@thegrammys you better hope I don't get a ticket to the party bitch/2 Dec

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flyinglotus Flying Lotus
@thegrammys suck a donkey dick/2 Dec

I want to like this, I really do, but it's squished to fuck and pretty much unlistenable to me.

the new one or cosmogramma?

cosmogramma is in my year top 10 but i think the new EP is pretty hard to listen to

Cosmogramma.

what do you mean squished to fuck?

Compressed. It's loud; all the instruments and elements in the mix are squished together and competing for attention, and it hurts my ears / head to try and listen to it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2010-12-31at143040.png

the intro to the first song is offputting to me. i'm learning to get beyond it, but the early cuts remind me of breakbeat, which always hurts my ears. i do like the jazzy progressions and flourishes i hear in some songs (e.g., pickled!).

Monster by Kanye:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2010-12-31at143429.png

Dance Yrself Clean by LCD (bot sure why only 1 channel??):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2010-12-31at143500.png

how do you feel about sidechain compression?

What's that?

Ah right, one band at a time. I feel the same way as I do about multiband and dynamic range compression, and compression on individual instruments / tracks etc etc etc. Which is that I am not against it per se, at all; I'm against records that come out of the other end sounding horrible. Any recording technique if used sympathetically can be awesome and make a record better. Equally, I think we're also at a point where relatively uncompressed (in all sense), naturally-recorded records now sound really fucking weird, leftfield, psychedelic, and experimental. And Sleigh Bells sound like Girls Aloud.

My ears hurt just looking at that Monster waveform.

Fwiw, I've enjoyed Cosmogramma a lot this year, but the compression issue is probably the reason why I never loved it and found it difficult to listen to regularly. I'm certain that its feel sound-wise contributed to its labeling as a 'difficult' or slept-on record amongst critics.

Aye; I don't think it would be at all difficult if it was better mastered. I think it'd be awesome. As for his spat on Twitter, maybe he'd have got a Grammy.

I remember someone complaining about FlyLo's set at Sonar being compressed to fuck, so maybe it's a production and not a mastering issue?

But then I don't really understand the distinction between the two for electronic music so uh

cosmogramma is in my year top 10 but i think the new EP is pretty hard to listen to

otm

holy crap you guys sound like grown ups

"great googly moogly! this new-fangled racket hurts my ears!"

also "reminds me of breakbeat" FTW

sadly, i am a grown-up.

lots of times i wish it were otherwise.

now, to ring in the new year, i will listen to dan fogelburg's old lang syne on repeat.

love that song to bits. "met my old lover at the grocery store . . . . "

anyhoo i am going to listen to three kenny burell LPs on blue note and THEN the flying lotus turned up super loud and get back to you on whether i succeeded in inducing a headache.

i feel like there are many layers to the sound and a great deal of implied space anyway in the beats, so i'm not sure what exactly's lost w/ the over-compression here that isn't made up for in other regards. or maybe it's just an aesthetic choice you don't like?

okay, i'm going to give cosmogramma another go.

Scik has major dislike for extreme compression in recordings. I know that and I hardly follow his every post.

a lot of this music makes heavy use of sidechain compression, as an effect. usually the kick is sidechained to another element of the track (the bass, a vocal, anything or everything) so that it pushes it out of the way on every hit. too much of it can make you feel kind of seasick when listening...i'm just wondering if that's what you're hearing instead of mastering compression.

(i haven't listened to cosmogramma in awhile so i don't remember how compressed it is or how sidechain-y, but the Teebs album is a good example of too much sidechaining for my taste)

yes Nick you should read up on sidechain compression -- it's not one band at a time, it's creatively applied by the artists at the mix stage. Jordan's describes it well and you know what it is, it's the sucking sound where the kick or snare or loud vocal hits seem to smack the rest of the mix out of the way for a second and then the mix inflates back up in the wake of it.

The technique also reduces dynamic range & allows for hotter mastering, which is why you hate it. But that's a taste thing and it's a world apart from your complaints about remastering -- people like the Daft Punk sound and you need to start distinguishing your argument against music ruined at the mastering stage and home producers like Flying Lotus who know what they're doing, even if it's not to your taste

I think I mentioned this before, but a year ago my dad, who has not listened to anything but classical radio for years, said that he finally figured out why he couldn't listen to the Beatles anymore, it was because their music had no dynamic range

then the mix inflates back up in the wake of it.

& not to go on about this too much, but sidechaining is what gives this record / Daft Punk their sense of rhythm, from pounding ones to lurchy swooping -- sidechaining is being used to compose the beats, it's integral. and even though the dynamic range is flat, it really churns the elements in the mix so it does drive the energy level higher

for the record I'm in the camp that's pretty grateful for your article. as late as 2006 I still heard people going on about how complaints about overcompression were just pro sound myopic whining and consumers didn't care -- but that's exactly why you've got to distinguish between older music that's being ruined and newer music that's living in it

I agree with Scik. Album is way too compressed to be truly enjoyable. It has no dimensions, no levels... you can't really separate the sounds in your head. It's the aural equivalent of a pixelated photograph.

Jordan, Milton: yes, now you describe it I recognise it. Not seen it referred to as side-chaining before, even when I was researching way back when, I don't think. Predictably, I don't like it! Aesthetic mixing choice by the artist or not, it's an effect that I find really unpleasant.

I'm currently "remastering" my old article for my blog, so I'll look into this further.

It is also sometimes referred to as "ducking" because the overall mix ducks behind the kick drum.

I'm kind of lost in the talk of compression and side-chaining, but I kind of get the gist. Anyone care for to give me a quick primer on this and what I'm supposed to see (and be aghast at) in those spectral images?

Lack of space, basically.

The Kanye's the worst because the waveform is clipped (i.e. flattened) at top & bottom; this means that sound has literally been cut out of the music in order to make it louder. Played on laptop speakers you probably wouldn't notice. On a good stereo it sounds like the edges of the sounds, instruments, vocals, etc have been chopped off - things are less distinguishable from each other, less sharp, and you get a weird digital hollowness sound where it vanishes.

There's barely any clipping in the Flying Lotus, but it is loud pretty much all the way through, which is going to make it tiring and lacking in excitement - it's like being shouted at rather than spoken to. What you can't see from the waveform is the sidechaining / inflating, which is audible as elements moving out of the way of, say, a kick drum, in the mix, when the kick drum hits. This, to me, just sounds really weird and artificial and I don't like it. (I don't much care for Daft Punk, as it happens.)

The LCD has plenty of space, plenty of definition, and lots of dynamic movements - quiet bits and loud bits. Think Pixies. It's exciting!

perhaps you would prefer The producer known as ACTRESS and his r&b concrète

i get the compression-aversion, but does it really ruin your enjoyment -- across the board -- of all albums you would otherwise enjoy?

does the actress album have more space and depth? it's a disc i admire more than i enjoy.

i can totally see where scik is coming from on this one tbh. this record is really hard to listen to for extended periods bcuz of how in your face the sound of it is. its not 'oooh its so loud im old' its just that it has no dynamic range which means its loud in a flatline way instead of a way that makes use of contrasting volumes.

when he describes it as shouting vs talking its a lil unfair. its more like imagining someone talking with the exact same volume & tonality on every word, so their sentences have no rise & fall ... its all just flatline.

i mean, you can say 'thats the point' all you want but its pretty offputting imo

i put up w/ mixtapes w/ shoddy mastering too but i also scrounge the internet for CDQs when i can find them for that reason